In the aftermath of the war, Virginia Woolf wrote in her novel Mrs. Dalloway of a former soldier who, overcome by fear, uttered, “The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.”
Those words resonate today, as NATO’s provocations in Ukraine put the possibility of nuclear winter on the table and the U.S. and Israel commit genocide against the Palestinian people as the world watches in horror.
We are tired of carnage and death. We want a permanent end to war.
The McCloy-Zorin Accords on the Agreed Principles for General and Complete Disarmament made two important points: first, that there should be “general and complete disarmament” and, second, that war should no longer be “an instrument for settling international problems.”
None of this is on the agenda today, as the Global North, with the U.S. at its helm, breathes fire like an angry dragon, unwilling to negotiate with its adversary in good faith.
Peace can be understood in two different ways: as passive peace or as active peace. Passive peace is the peace that exists when there is a relative lack of ongoing warfare, yet countries around the world continue to build up their military arsenals. Military spending now overwhelms the budgets of many countries: even when guns are not fired, they are still being purchased. That is peace of a passive kind.
Active peace is a peace in which the precious wealth of society goes toward ending the dilemmas faced by humanity. An active peace is not just an end to gunfire and military expenditures, but a dramatic increase in social spending to end problems such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and despair.
Wealth, which is produced by society, must not deepen the pockets of the rich and fuel the engines of war but fill the bellies of the many.
We want ceasefires, certainly, but we want more than that. We want a world of active peace and development.
We want a world where our grandchildren have to go to a museum to see what a gun looked like.
Source: Vijay Prashad: When Guns Are in Museums – Consortium News